Saturday, June 5, 2010

I have got to get this off my chest!....I am a firm believer that teachers have one of the most important jobs on earth, they have the ability to change lives and shape a person's mind by teaching. My favorite aunt and favorite uncle are both teachers, amazing teachers, and inspired me to want to teach. I believe that I will teach one day, as soon as I finish school. So with all of that being said let me share with you my experience with the University of Phoenix's online campus called Axia College.

I began my academic journey in January 2009, I am graduating in August of this year and could not be happier to get out of this school. I did not have a terrible experience, but it is one that taught me more life lessons about people than I cared to learn. I was stalked by a former classmate, I had several students plagiarize my work in several different classes, I had some terrible teachers and some pretty awesome teachers but those were few and far between. Now that I am in the last stretch of classes my current experience with my PSY-265 instructor Yvonne Stephens is one that I will remember forever, simply because she is without a doubt the WORST "teacher" that I have ever met or had to deal with. The woman should not be allowed anywhere near a classroom, online or otherwise. She is lazy and vindictive and has targeted me and singled me out and made me feel sick to stomach about going into that classroom forum. Here is the story....(I would've posted a video explaining, but I don't want to cry on camera)

When I started PSY-265, Psychology of Human Sexuality, I was pretty excited because this instructors bio made it sound as though she was going to be an active participant in class and was excited to teach us; however, 5 weeks into class I realized that this was not the case, she took no interest in the discussions, took no interest in any of the assignments, basically it was the easiest A I would ever get. I am not one that likes the easy A, I am paying a BUTTLOAD of money for my education and I demand to be taught. So, I asked in an extremely nice way for the teacher to please interact with us students because I wanted to learn from her. She did not like that AT ALL, she became very defensive and has now dropped my grade, singled me out in the classroom, has sent me messages in my individual forum stating that students have complained about ME, which by the way- so not the case. I have documented everything, sent it in to my academic counselor, shown proof that the teacher not only does not interact with us but PLAGIARIZES other students in discussion weeks, when I say plagiarizes I mean she takes another student's idea and passes it off as her own without giving credit to the original student. She then expects us to respond to her, which by the way none of us do because we're not stupid.

So, what has been done about all of this by the University of Phoenix? NOTHING. Not one thing, everywhere I turn I am stonewalled and the teacher is defended by LOOPHOLES in the University's rules. The teacher used a program called Write Point (which students also use) to "grade" my paper, basically teachers have the ability and are supposed to use this system to check the grammar of every paper for every student for every assignment, well up until last week, my grade has been a 100%, it is now 97% because she decided to use Write Point to grade my paper and because of a few comma errors she dropped my grade, which according to the school is perfectly fine. EVEN THOUGH FOR THE LAST 6 WEEKS SHE HAS NOT SUBMITTED ANY OF MY OTHER PAPERS TO THIS SYSTEM. Yet, it's not in the least abnormal. Oh and did I mention that she didn't submit ANY of the other student's papers to this system for grading, yeah how do I know? I asked.

I have 2.5 weeks left and 6 assignments, she has the potential to seriously screw my grade that I have worked my ass off to get and there is nothing I can do about it, except do everything I can to make sure every assignment is free of all errors, including comma errors. At the end of the day I know that I am a great student and I deserve a quality education, as does everyone who is attending school. The fact that the University of Phoenix employs and protects "teachers" like this makes me realize that all the stereotyping about this school is true. I was warned before starting there that even though they are accredited they are not worth the money they charge to attend. So, thanks for providing me a mediocre education, a horrific experience and not helping me or listening to anything I have to say. If I could get my money back I would. I am incredibly grateful that my time with them is almost through, only one class left and I'm out of there and onto a real school.

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I have always been fascinated with the why's of the world. Why do people do what they do? Why do people think they way they think? Why can some find love and other's can't? Why are some positive and some negative? I could go on and on... My point is to try to find answers to some of these questions and provide feedback to those who ask the why's too. So, join me on this psychological experiment called Life...